Vincent Auriol: Encyclopedia II - Vincent Auriol - Postwar life and presidency

Vincent Auriol - Postwar life and presidency

After the war, Auriol presided over the constituent assemblies that drafted the constitution of the short-lived French Fourth Republic. He lobbied for a "third force" between the communists and Gaullists. He led the French delegation to the United Nations and was France's first representative on the United Nations Security Council in 1946. The National Assembly voted him the first President of the Fourth Republic on January 16, 1947 by a wide margin, giving Auriol 452 votes to 242 for the MRP candidate, Auguste Champetier de Ribes.

As president, Auriol pursued a relatively weak presidency as there had been under the Third Republic and attempted to reconcile political factions within France and warm relations between France and its allies. He was criticized for France's ailing economy and political turmoil in the postwar period, and the war in Indochina. A series of debilitating strikes were waged across France in 1947 led by the Confédération Générale du Travail. The strikes escalated into violence in November of that year that led, on November 28, to the government deploying 80,000 reservists to face the "insurrection." The communists, who often supported the strikes, were expelled from the legislature in early December. The strikes ended on December 10, but more would come in 1948, and again in 1953 in response to the Laniel government's austerity program.

Apart from the inconclusive war in Indochina, France's colonial empire decayed under Auriol's presidency. Clashes in Morocco, Madagascar, Algeria, and Tunisia became more frequent; the Algerian independence movement, the Front de Libération Nationale, was founded in 1951, in 1953 the French overthrew the Sultan of Morocco after he demanded greater autonomy. The French waged a brutal war of repression in Madagascar and imprisoned Tunisian independence leader Habib Bourguiba in 1952.

When his term as president expired, he did not run for a second. He was succeeded by René Coty as President of France on January 16, 1954. Auriol commented on leaving office, "The work was killing me; they called me out of bed at all hours of the night to receive resignations of prime ministers."[1] (There were eighteen different governments during his seven years as President.)

After his presidency, Auriol assumed the role of elder statesman and wrote articles on political topics. Auriol became a member of the Constitutional Council of France in 1958 at the establishment of the French Fifth Republic; he resigned from the SFIO in the same year. He unsuccessfully lobbied against the constitution in the 1958 national referendum. He resigned from his position on the Constitutional Council in 1960 to protest the growing power of Charles de Gaulle's presidency. In 1965, he endorsed François Mitterrand for the Presidency. Auriol died at Muret, Haute-Garonne, on 1 January 1966.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Postwar life and presidency", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki